The Tortoisemobile
Dahl reimagines the race between the tortoise and the hare as wager race. The winner gets to keep eating at Mr. Roach’s vegetable patch while the loser must stay away forever. Dahl also introduces a new player in this drama, a rat—both figurative and literally—who plays both ends against the middle by building a little car that the tortoise can hide under his shell…and then informing the hare of this scheme. The imagery of tortoise in the race takes on a whole new complexion:
“Each time he had to change a gear,
Black smoke came from belching his rear.
Each time he had to use the brake,
His shell began to creak and shake.
But oh, it was a wondrous thing
To see a tortoise on the wing.”
“Unsuitable for Small Readers”
The illustration on the cover includes—as part of the cartoon art—a warning to parents that some material may not be exactly what they expect from a Roald Dahl illustrated book of verse. Nothing really qualifies as obscene or profane, but in comparison to the adventures of a certain Mr. Fox or Enormous Crocodile, sly use of imagery used to convey what is and isn’t happening in “Physical Training” is definitely off-color:
“She said, `So you can get it right
I’ll have to hold you very tight.’
She held me here, she held me there,
By gum, she held me everywhere.
She kindly taught me, after that,
To wrestle with her on the mat.”
There Once was a Boy Named Aladdin
In Dahl’s hands, the story of how Aladdin came to get involved with the magic lamp is quite different from the more familiar version and also includes a little stuff not quite suitable for bedtime reading. Turns out that Aladdin was merely a pawn in the hands of an old Chinese man named Jock MacFaddin who, failing to get his hands on the lamp himself, seduces Aladdin into the doing the job for him. Aladdin is at first reluctant to go into descend into the unknown dangers lurking within the dark caverns in which the magic lamp resides. But Jock pulls out all the stop to entice a change of mind by calling upon the magic of imagery:
“Now if you really want to know,
The only dangerous things down there
Are dancing-girls with bottoms bare.
I think you might enjoy a fling
With some curvaceous little thing.”
Too Unsuitable to Describe
The parts of the book which would almost certainly be deemed unsuitable for publication in a book genuinely written for kids occurs in the retelling of the story of Ali Baba. Instead of forty thieves, however, “Open Sesame” unleashes about forty quick delineations of bawdy behavior going on inside the London Ritz:
“A naked girl and some male freak
Were playing games of hide and seek.
In one big bed there slept a goat,
A diamond necklace round its throat.
And in the honeymooners’ suite—
What goings-on beneath the sheet!
Fantastic sights both rich and rare
That no one’s going to mention here.”
